Really Awful Movies

Lemmy. Killed by death. Three words, and three more, RIP.

He inhabited the worlds of wrestling, metal and horror — our holy trio of ineradicable indulgences growing up.

Lemmy Kilmister was, of course, the lead shouter/bassist (and only constant member) of power trio and sonic equivalent of a riding mower, Motorhead (about whom he once said: they were the “dirtiest rock’n’roll band in the world. If you moved in next door, your lawn would die”). He wielded a punk metal buzzsaw bass that caused subterranean rumbles and tinnitus in equal measure.

Lemmy has been called “heavy metal personified [in] a single person.” We can’t find the original source of this quote, which may be as mythic as Kilmister’s crazy life. Regardless of its provenance, it’s damn true.

Best known for Ace of Spades, Born to Raise Hell, The Chase is Better than the Catch and of course, the aforementioned Killed by Death, Motorhead had been ripping out ferocious metal since 1977. They were led by the Staffordshire maniac Lemmy (Born Ian Fraser Kilmister) and the band’s best songs (Jailbait, [We are] The Road Crew, Overkill and Iron Fist) shred speakers.

The band crossed into the squared circle as well.

The WWE, long known for cornball musical intros like The Hulkster’s “Real American” or Koko B Ware’s “Do the Bird”, got its bell rung when Motorhead bestowed on buddy Triple H, a real arena shaker for the wrestler’s entrance music: The Game.

Motorhead even rocked Wrestlemania in 05, providing the WWE a shot in the arm — nothing steroid related — raw credibility.

Say what you will about Triple H, (that whole “nothing nice” and whatnot) he did strike up an unusual friendship with Lemmy.

And unusual is just the word to describe Troma.

The longest-running independent film studio in North America, Uncle Lloyd’s baby is best known for churning out and distributing decidedly non-PC horror films chock-a-block with nudity, relentless violence and nauseating gore, and these are a few of our favorite things.

Many dismiss Troma films as grade-D shlock, but in doing so they overlook the sly social commentary and biting satire underlying many of its offerings (please see our podcast and review of Poultrygeist).

Lemmy appeared in a number of Troma-tastic films including Terror Firmer and Citizen Toxie. He never asked for a single red-cent for appearing in any one of them. Instead, his only two requests were a bottle of Maker’s Mark and two “Tromettes” to chat up during filming. How rock ‘n’ roll is THAT?

His most memorable turn was in what is arguably Troma’s best flick, Tromeo and Juliet. In this twisted punk adaptation of the Bard, Lemmy serves as the narrator, spouting iambic pentameter in his own inimitable mole-y, marble-mouthed way.

We like to think he’s keeping up the bottom end with Phil Lynott on the other side, shrieking along with Mitch Mitchell’s beat and trading riffs with Randy Rhodes or Jeff Hanneman.

Lemmy sang, “it’s all about your debt and if you can pay it. It’s all about pain and who’s gonna make it,” and truthfully, it’s lucky he made it this far with his slew of health problems and years of self-abuse.

A big thanks to the man, the myth and the monolith.

Your music lives on you filthy bastard, or as one of our Twitter buds called him, the “Conan the Barbarian of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

With Gordon Ramsay now barking marching orders at kids in Master Chef Junior, it seems like the food landscape is losing topsoil.

Bitter Feast isn’t our first ~~entrée~~ entry into the genre: We reviewed The Craving, about a serial killing celeb chef in San Fran whose specialty was paella. Paella with… BLOOD! Kidding.

In a culture for the most part lacking in material wants, some might see the obsession with how food is ostentatiously and publicly prepared as a harbinger of end times. These people are no doubt right, but there’s something more to it than that: at the heart of plebiscite reality shows, what’s being judged is craftsmanship. That goes for whether someone is building a deck, warbling Aretha Franklin or getting a rise out of a cheese souffle/a Gordon Ramsay.

At Really Awful Movies, we’re in the business of criticism. So the idea that an antagonist would turn the tables on a critic, made us shiver in our boots.

NY Times food critic Ruth Reichl famously donned disguises to review restaurants (For those who are interested, Garlic and Sapphires is a pretty neat read). In Bitter Feast, prickly food blogger JT Franks could use a disguise as well, as he’s hunted down and kidnapped by a celebrity chef / TV personality Peter Gray, who felt the sting of his poison keyboard. The nasty reviews spurred Gray’s exit from a high-end New York boîte and sent his career south. Here revenge is literally a dish served cold.

Franks is shackled in a basement in Upstate New York and gets a taste of his own medicine, forced to cook the perfect sunny side up egg and steak or face a wrath far more sinister than a dressing down from Chef Graham Elliot.

Franks’ spurned girlfriend, meanwhile, is tailing him with a private investigator.

Bitter_feast_movie There’s five minutes of Molto Mario Batali as the restaurateur who drops the hammer on Gray, sending the cordon bleu into a tailspin. For some reason, the ginger chef dominates the DVD extras, waxing poetic on the state of the food business in an interview which is double that of his screen time.

A neat premise is matched with appropriately lush surroundings but Bitter Feast is bitter sweet: there’s enough silliness and overreacting to sink it.

Given the cynicism directed at crappy daytime cooking shows in Bitter Feast, Batali’s involvement is all the more weird. It’s one thing sending up one’s image as a chef, it’s quite another deriding how he’s earned his living of late.

**1/2 (out of 5)